o sign of pleasure or even of admiration.
Her head, which she had held straight up for the first quarter of a mile,
sank lower and lower as they clambered on; yet she gave no signs of
drowsiness--only of a mortal weariness which seemed to attack the very
springs of life. The pomp and pageantry of the heavens, burning with
all the pigments of the rainbow, failed to appeal to a soul shut within
dungeon bars. Rocks and mighty gorges darkling to the eye and stirring to
the imagination held no story for her; she looked neither to the right
nor to the left while the beauty lasted, much less when the last gleam
had faded from the mountain tops and a troop of leaden clouds, coming up
from the east, added their shadows to those of premature night.

The driver, who had been eying these clouds for some little time, felt
that he ought to speak if she did not. Pulling up his horses as though to
give them a breathing spell, he remarked over his shoulder with a strain
of anxiety in his voice:

"I hope your friends live near the top of the hill, missus. A storm is
coming up, and it's getting very dark. Will you have to walk far?"

"No, no," she assured him with a quick glance up and around her. "A
little way, a very little way!" Then she became quiet and absorbed again.

"I've got to go on," he broke in again as the top of the hill came in
sight. "I've a passenger for the eight-fifty train waiting for me more
than a mile along the road. I shall have to leave you after I set you
down."

"That's right; I expect that. I can take care of myself--don't worry. Not
but what you're very kind," she added after a moment, in her cultured
voice, with just enough trace of accent to make it linger sweetly in the
ear.

"Then here we are," he called back a moment later, jerking his horses to
a standstill and jumping down into the road. "Goin' east or goin' west?"
he asked as he took another glance at her frail and poorly protected
figure.

"This way," she answered, pointing east.

He stopped and stared at her.

"Nobody lives that way," he said, "--that is, nobody near enough for you
to reach shelter before the storm bursts."

"You are mistaken," she said, cringing involuntarily as the first big
clap of thunder rolled in endless echoes among the mountains. And turning
about, she started hurriedly into the shadows of the narrow cross-road.

He gave one glance back at his horses, the twitching of whose ears showed
nervousness, uttered some f